With the CleverFiles Disk Drill Pro review, you can search and recover files that have been deleted or accidentally saved over.
The data recovery utility scans your hard drive to find any lost documents and even external drives. It’s easy-to-use interface is full of advanced features like filters for sorting through all the results. So, you only get what’s best for you.
CleverFiles Disk Drill Pro Review Pricing
Disk Drill Basic keeps you in control of the data recovery process for personal use as well. The software allows you to:
- verify recoverable data,
- back up failing disks and,
- protect your files before things go wrong with a backup plan.
CleverFiles offers reasonable price at $89 for Disk Drill Pro version which is less expensive than its competitors. They also offer 20 percent discounts for education, non-profit & government workers.
They all can take advantage of lifetime upgrades available on Disk Drill Standard edition that costs only $29.
CleverFiles Enterprise licensing can be installed on unlimited desktops. This is quite different from competitors like Seagate and Prosoft, who offer dedicated recovery services (as with Disk Drill).
In addition to exporting forensic data in DFXML format for analysis purposes, it allows users to have access to a full suite of tools that support all major file types.
This version of Disk Drill requires OS X 10.8 or later, which was installed on any Apple computer purchased after the fall of 2013.
Windows users should note that Macs have more features than this software provides as well as older versions available for download if they do not meet these requirements.
The Testing Grounds
To ensure that this test was reflective of real world usage, I tested Disk Drill alongside four other recovery utilities on two Macs. An early-2015 MacBook Pro and a late-2014 Mac Mini. Both systems run the same version of Mac OS Sierra.
The MacBook Pro features a 120 GB solid state drive (SSD). Whereas the Mac Mini uses 500 GB hard disk drive(HDD).
To make sure everything ran smoothly across both platforms, I deleted six common file types from each machine. I did this about 2 weeks before testing began using Disk Drill along with 4 other tools to recover lost files. This way I could get as diverse results as possible for comparison purposes.
Disk Drill has 357 supported file signatures that scan for files based on their structure. This is an exhaustive mode called Deep Scan, which I chose in order to maximize my chance of recovery.
The utility can reconstruct and retrieve inaccessible data by using signature analysis. It is a type of scanning deep into the structures of different types of files at once rather than just looking for keywords or filenames alone within them all.
Data Recovery
To run a deep scan on my SSD, I had to wait less than forty minutes. The utility identified thirty-four files and thirty reconstructed ones.
It looked as good as other utilities manage with this drive. Of those files, Disk Drill mainly found preference and extension (plist & pss) files along with seven PNG images that were unrecoverable from the deleted folder.
Running a deep scan on my hard drive was much slower but yielded more results. After almost two days, Disk Drill had retrieved 67,000 files and 172,000 reconstructed files from the fragmented disk.
With the integrated preview, I was able to identify originals without too much difficulty. While my testing focused on recovering popular files from a single partition, I would remiss if I didn’t add that Disk Drill can scan and recover other partitions like Apple’s Recovery Partition or Boot Camp for Windows.
Additional Features
Disk Drill has many other useful features, one of which is iOS Recovery. With this feature you can retrieve recently deleted data (no longer than 14 days).
Because the recovery process relies on iTunes backups, you must sync devices to your computer if you want access to any recovered files.
If iCloud backup is used instead, then there will soon be an option for recovering lost files via that method as well. Android users are also able to use Disk Drill and simply need their device connected in order to recover anything stored there too.
Why Choose Disk Drill Pro?
Disk Drill includes a feature called Disk Health, which I only used to confirm the health of my SSD (which thankfully registered 92 percent wear level).
CleverFiles deserves praise for including this feature that’s rarely bundled with other data recovery utilities. For example, Prosoft sells a separate optimization tool.
Drive Genius is more rich than what it bundles in its software package.
Duplicate Finder lets you select and scan a folder for space-wasting duplicates, such as in my Pictures folder. I located several dozen duplicate files, but decided to delete just some of them.
The rest would be okay on my computer! Clean up is simply removing an application file – not all its tentacles like AppZapper does. It’s nice that it has this feature built-in though since doing so manually can take time.
If you have a flash drive (2 GB or larger), create a bootable Recovery Drive! This feature is similar to Prosoft Data Rescue 4’s BootWell, and it can be valuable.
However, if my Mac won’t start up properly I would go for Alsoft’s premier recovery utility: the Editors’ Choice award-winning DiskWarrior 5.
Disk Drill is a powerful data recovery software which also provides functionality to protect against future loss of important files.
The Data Backup tool allows you to create an exact copy byte-by-byte. But, this process can take hours depending on the size of your hard drive and will require additional external storage devices.
You won’t be able to restore any lost files if they were deleted after installing Disk Drill’s protection feature. It only works prior to losing certain data types (e.g., photos).
Also Read: FonePaw Data Recovery Review: Pros, Cons, Performance
FAQ’s on CleverFiles Disk Drill Pro Review
Is Disk Drill from Cleverfiles safe?
Yes, Disk Drill can be used to recover deleted or lost files on computer safely.
Can you pause Disk Drill?
Disk Drill data recovery tool has a great feature that allows you to pause the scan at any moment and resume it later when it is convenient for you – recovery sessions.
Is Disk Drill free for Mac?
Disk Drill is available in a Free/Basic version and a Pro version for $89. Disk Drill is a Mac data recovery software designed natively for Mac OS: easily protect your files from accidental deletion with Recovery Vault and recover lost data from Mac disks.
Why is my iPhone not showing up on Disk Drill?
Note that iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad) are not supported at this time. Physical disk damage: If a disk has physical damage, such as significant bad sectors, then it may not be visible in Disk Drill.
How long does Disk Drill take to recover?
If you have a large hard drive or disk, this can take hours (or even days). Starting with Disk Drill 4 there is no need to wait till the scan is over to preview or restore the recoverable files. If no files are found, refer to Troubleshooting Scan Results.
Conclusion
Disk Drill Pro is a great data recovery choice for Macs running on HDDs. It has vast file signature support, and comes with filters to reduce results when browsing files in tens of thousands.
In addition to these features related to data protection, Disk Drill offers repair options just like the veteran software program DiskWarrior does.
However it cannot rebuild directories once they are lost or damaged. This would still require professional help from companies such as Seagate or Prosoft Systems.
I hope the CleverFiles Disk Drill Pro review was helpful and informative.
